


a man at war writes home

by splatticus



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 09:49:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15216521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splatticus/pseuds/splatticus
Summary: Absence makes the heart. That's it: absence makes the heart.David Pastrnak grows up and grows into himself.





	a man at war writes home

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [adeleblaircassiedanser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeleblaircassiedanser/pseuds/adeleblaircassiedanser) in the [PuckingRare2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:** So hopefully everyone has seen the lap sitting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps-EvDqU_VA
> 
> These two were in love and played together as babies in Sweden, and then when Pasta went to Boston he took Willie's number!! Like! https://twitter.com/onlyoneloislane/status/963232996538114048
> 
> I would read ANYTHING for this pairing, but maybe the first time they play each other and Willie realizes Pasta's wearing #88?
> 
> -
> 
> [Fic title and part of the summary from a poem by Bob Hicok.](http://poem-locker.tumblr.com/post/26680162360/bob-hicok-absence-makes-the-heart-thats-it)

When David is about to make his way to Sweden at sixteen years old, his mother packs these for him: a full-sized flag of the Czech Republic, a bunch of TOEFL workbooks, and more socks than he knows what to do with.

"I can just go to saunas if it gets too cold," he teases her. "I hear Sweden has those." 

The laugh she gives back is a loud one, despite the sadness in her eyes. David watches his dad turn sideways from the bed to look fondly at her as she tests the stroller handle of David's luggage. They do many things as a family in his Dad's bedroom nowadays, everything from packing to homework to Playstation to Extraliga games. His dad insists despite the noise, because time is a precious resource.

It's time that David's leaving behind, even as it tears at him, but this is fine. He has his father's blessing, and an unknown country is nothing to him. Pastrnaks always land on their feet.

-

Södertälje or even Stockholm aren't overwhelming by city standards. Even Prague, when he was there, had more tourists littering the streets on any given day. He feels comfortable there from the beginning, feels like he's about the right size for this country. The AXA Sports Center is another thing entirely, however, because it contains William Nylander.

He and a couple of players are already warming up by the time David arrives, so he just contents himself with watching. David can tell which one is Nylander by his stride alone, pivoting away from defenders like they're stationary roadblocks. Elegant, long strides at great speed, making blade hitting ice sound beautiful--a different style from David's, whose bursts of speed often come with an explosion of limbs.

When the coach introduces him to the team before the actual practice, he asks David how he prefers to be called.

"Pasta," he says with a grin.

"That's cute," he hears William say, almost quietly.

-

Their first real conversation involves Willy looking in horror at his hockey stick as they sit at their locker room stalls beside each other.

"Who taught you that horrible tape job, dude? Is that, like, a Czech thing?"

David just looks at him in confusion. He understands most of the individual words, but Willy talks too quickly for him to piece it together. Taking a deep breath, Willy holds a hand up at David as he leans down to rummage at his duffel bag, before fishing out a phone in triumph. He fiddles with it for a while, his tongue sticking out in concentration, before he thrusts the phone screen at David's face. Peering at it, he's surprised to see a couple of sentences in Czech and oh, it's about his stick tape. Three stripes of black spread apart across the middle of the blade.

"Is normal," he shrugs before going back to take off his elbow pads. Explaining how it helps him stretch out his stash will take more English sentences than his TOEFL books have provided him so far. After a while, he looks back up again at Willy, and decides to go for it. "What you use? To translate to Czech?" 

William gives his smiles so easily. "I'll show you. Do you have an iPhone?"

He shrugs no. He left his Telefonica phone with his brother, and his check from the league doesn't come in until a week later.

"Oh, that's okay. We can ask coach to help you get one. Or maybe we'll ask my dad. We can have this whole system where I ask you things in English and then I type it up..."

He starts talking a little too quickly, his words muffled as he steps out of his practice clothes, but David just smiles and watches him, his cheerful voice flowing through him like water.

Willy continues to bug him about his stick in the next week or so, enough that David tries to tease him. If Willy really wants him to change, he can do the tape job for him. David expects him to say no, but Willy's face lights up and agrees readily. Taking David's stick without even asking, Willy makes quick work of the blade before moving up to use half of his own tape roll to create a knob with a substantial grip. David keeps his eyes trained to his hands in fascination.

"Pasta, you like black, right?" Willy asks, handing the stick over. "How about you try this today?"

After drills, William looks up at him expectantly. David feels guilty but he can't get himself to lie, so he just raises a shoulder apologetically. "Too heavy. I don't like it."

Willy is appalled. "What, why? That's Mario Lemieux's tape job."

"Lemieux is big, I'm little. It makes the stick too heavy. I break my wrist."

They try a few ones over the next few days, and David gets a crash course on scuff marks, wide versus thin tape, stick wax, future Hall of Famers that William's father has played with. He hands over his phone to David so he can ask better questions via Google Translate, then answers them patiently as his wrist flicks back and forth across the blade. It takes "the Ovi"--a wide spread covering half the blade with the toe covered, but changing white tape to black--for them to find something that David likes.

William whoops like he just won a shootout. He says, "Great! Now I can teach you how to do it."

"Okay," David answers shyly.

-

On his last locker cleanout day as an athlete in the Allsvenskan, before leaving for home, William packs these things for him: an Adidas beanie that he has insisted looks better on David, and an entire plastic bag filled with black stick tape.

David whips his head back in surprise when he finds them tucked in his equipment bag, turning to look at Willy beside him. Their season has ended days ago, and Willy is in a hoodie with his things completely packed, but he's slumped like he has no intention to leave just yet. The next time that David will see him, he'll probably have his eighteenth birthday already, but right now, Willy seems even younger than the first time he and David met.

"Willy, this from you?"

He answers with a shrug, not meeting David's eyes. "You can have them."

David stares back at the bag. There are about thirty rolls of tape in it, at least a hundred euros' worth. "Thanks, but no--it's too much."

"Ugh, just take them, they're useless to me," Willy responds irritably. "I only use white tape."

They both know that this is a lie. Willy tries out tape jobs like he tries out his clothes, and he has a lot of those. If Willy sets his mind to it, he can go through this stash easily. David doesn't take it badly, how Willy can't say goodbye without being rude about it. He just thanks him sincerely.

Willy stands up at the same time as he does, and they stare at each other hopelessly, like tourists lost at an unfamiliar part of town.

He has spent two years here in Södertälje, has wasted hours staring out at the canal from the window of the first apartment he's ever had. Has reveled at weekends with William in his family's house by the lake, their bodies warmed by the sun. Playing here was the one thing that pulled him out of despair when his father's long suffering finally ended, William's arms around him that had kept him from flying apart then, and now David gives in to the urge to do the same here, wrapping his arms around Willy. He clutches back tightly.

"We still gonna talk, okay?" David says, aiming for levity. "I have iPhone now. We FaceTime."

Against him, Willy nods his head furiously.

"I'll still see you at the combine. And the draft. And we gonna play in the NHL." He says the last part against Willy's hair. Softly, like a prayer.

Boston drafts him, and David happily spends the start of his season in their minor league system. He makes the tapes last in Providence. It takes him well into the regular season before he even touches the supplies that the Bruins provide him, and even then he feels a profound sadness when they run out.

-

They ask him what number he wants on his first call-up to the NHL and he says, "Eighty-eight."

That surprises the equipment managers a little. It's not the number that he was using in Providence or in the Czech national team. But he's been living with that number for a while now, even though he no longer sees it streaking ahead of him on his left, no longer spies the blond flow that covers the top of the number, or the picture-perfect skating that always accompanies it. Eighty-eight is William Nylander and Södertälje and love and belonging, and he craves even an imitation of those on his body, right here in Boston.

It's not retired or in use, so David gets it.

Unsurprisingly, it takes hours after his first game for Willy to find out about it. It's a rest day after a big game where everyone's eyes are turned on him, and he relishes the time alone after a night of requisite celebration with the vets. Then David gets a text that says: _what the fuck._ Then David gets a call.

Willy doesn't speak for a long time after their hellos. David resigns himself to the task of bringing it up first. And then he hears a small voice, asking him timidly, "Is this you trolling me?" 

David takes the phone away from his ear and stares at it in confusion, before replying, "What trolling? Like the fairy tale?" 

"No, I mean." A frustrated huff. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No! Never." He feels bad that Willy thought this, even for a second. David doesn't know why he ever imagined that taking your former teammate's number is as clear a message as a love letter, but if he has to use words, well, he's never going to back down from the challenge. Pastrnaks can be brave. "It's because I think about you all the time. Because I always want to remember you."

"Oh."

"I didn't feel sure about telling you, until America."

"Oh."

"That's not okay?"

"No. I mean, yes, of course," Willy says in a rush before turning completely silent. And then, "Pasta. I thought it was just me. I'm so happy."

David can hear it in the hitch in his voice, how close he is to crying. He must look like how he did when they watched _Marley and Me_ a year ago, and Willy wasn't prepared for the end. His face was puffy and red as he pressed his cheek surreptitiously against a throw pillow. David misses him like a limb. 

When Willy speaks again, there's a teasing lilt to it, despite the raspiness. "Couldn't we have figured it out earlier? Our teams are divisional rivals. We have to be enemies now."

David laughs at that.

"I don't care. They're just teams."

-

The Boston Bruins is just a team but--

He has never experienced hockey this good, even in the two years on William's wing. The ice is smaller, the opponents are larger, faster, meaner, and David can do nothing but try to keep his head above water. He sometimes catches himself just watching Patrice Bergeron with his mouth agape, looks on in disbelief at the way he protects the puck against large-limbed missiles careening around him. David finds Milan Lucic sacrificing the body to get pucks to him, pushing away opposing forwards so David can have wide open looks at the net. He is living his dream among them.

They are also a family off the ice, and they fold David into it so effortlessly. His formerly solitary lunches in Providence has become afternoons with the Chara family or the newlywed Krejcis. He doesn't lack opportunities to improve his English but he hears Czech spoken to him regularly, and it's a comfort. He even exchanges a few Swedish phrases with Z sometimes, simply because he misses it on his tongue.

He tells all this to Willy over FaceTime, and his blue eyes light up even in the pixelation of their sketchy connection. He lets David ramble on even though he has his host of good news himself. He's been playing with the Marlies since being called up from Sweden halfway through the last season, and his AHL performance gets even the majors sports networks talking.

"Well, just in Toronto," William says demurely. The details don't matter, now that Mike Babcock wants him called up to the team.

"Maybe we play against each other soon." David says impishly. "Don't be so bad that you get demoted."

Willy doesn't do bad. He becomes the beacon of hope on a last place Maple Leafs team. And in the dying weeks of the NHL regular season, they get the chance to face each other.

Boston may be hockey mad, but the Bruins still have to compete for space among the city's sports franchises. In Toronto, it's the show. The media attention there is a billion times more overwhelming. David stares at outstretched arms thrusting mics and recorders in front of him. He talks for what seems like hours, stretching the limits of his English and his politeness.

The Bruins spill into the ice of the Air Canada Center for warm-ups. David sees his flow first, then the profile of his nose. Then he turns and catches David's stare. This moment is exactly the wish that they've whispered at each other in empty locker rooms, underneath the tree shade in Willy's backyard. They don't stop staring and grinning, even when Kasperi Kapanen bumps against Willy as he skates around.

After the anthems, Marchy puts an arm around David before subtly facewashing him. "Stop smiling so much, there are too many cameras here. You look like an idiot." But he doesn't.

David has always traveled far for better hockey, forced to acquire new languages, new lives, new ways to be. First Sweden, then Boston. He leaves home for foreign lands; that's what he does. And somehow Willy ends up in the places where he goes, his blond head always in the middle of the pilgrimage.

-

They haven't seen each other enough to learn the limits of each other's bodies yet, have to wait for the regular season to end in order to get their fill. But there's no skitter of desperation, only the relief of finally, finally being close enough to touch. William is smiling throughout their kisses, self-satisfied and triumphant. David feels a twinge of annoyance that this mood is partly at his expense but William makes even smugness look so attractive.

"Pretty good, huh? I bet you're glad to see me a third time today." 

"I don't know, maybe Netflix is better." David laughs when William punches him in the shoulder. But then he unclenches his hand and rests it over David's heart. Keeps it there. 

David marvels at how William is born of cold countries but is always, always warm. He's happy to have him here on a miserable February in Boston, thawing David's loneliness for a few weeks more, just enough to get through the grind of the season. For this, he can find it himself to be magnanimous and be happy for William. 

"Congratulations on hat trick. I hate you a little because it's against me." 

-

Playing the first ever NHL game against the person you love is exhilarating, the joy you feel for him and for yourself coloring the entire sixty minutes. By the time you play the eighth game against him in two years, however, the person you love starts to blend in more with the hated blue and white of the enemy.

"Fuck those bastards, eh?" Marchy says beside him on the bench. They're at the TD Garden and the Leafs have scored the first goal of the game. "Let's give these Leafs fans a reason to shut the fuck up at our barn."

David's line with Bergeron and Marchand has a reputation for tough play, but the Maple Leafs don't exactly play like angels either. The Kadri line is a pain like always, but he also learns to feel distaste for the Matthews line every time they find each other on the ice. Hyman forechecks with a ferocity that leaves David with bruises down his side the next day. William is brilliant as always, with slick passing and a deceptively deadly shot, but the color he wears is different from the one the David does, so David needs to stop him.

They win on the back of Bergy's performance, and David is proud for having been a part of it.

-

Sometimes there are good games, when the phone calls after are light and teasing, despite inevitable defeat for one of them. Sometimes it's a fraught and painful thing, filled with the silences, and they pretend that it's because they're both eating on the other end of the line. David knows what he would use to fill those--complaints about uncalled penalties, the kind of taunts that he'd spit out if he isn't playing against Willy--so the silences remain just that. He can probably let calls during bad games go to voicemail, but he has never not answered a call from Willy and he's afraid of what will happen if he learns that habit as well.

And then Game Two happens and the phone calls stop completely.

Three weeks later, on the night when his team is kicked out of the playoffs by the Tampa Bay Lightning, he thinks back on that game. Six points for him against Toronto, an all-time personal best, and complete domination of the opponent. The Maple Leafs never had an answer. He remembers the hard look Willy leveled at him every time their eyes met, the smirk that David kept on his face. Standard agitator behavior. It was the playoffs after all, and all bets were off.

But now it's over and he's stewing at some benighted hotel room in Tampa, where it's too hot and he's surrounded on all sides with people who were wishing for him to do badly and got their wish. Then William calls and is drunk and David can tell that this is probably the phone call that he should've refused to take.

"At least we softened your goon line enough to get destroyed by Victor fucking Hedman. That must have been fun." He slurs his words but the vindictive curl around them comes from a stone cold place that William has probably been nursing for weeks.

"Toronto makes you full jerk now," David responds meanly. "Congratulations."

"Fuck you."

"I'm not the one calling to fight. Go home already. Maybe when you get to Sweden, you become a decent person again? Who knows?"

This is probably the first time that he has used words as a weapon at Willy, has angled them specifically to hurt. This is probably also part of growing up, turning into people that they like a little less.

"Fuck you," William says again. 

"Be better chirper. Maybe call your headshot making teammates to teach you how." 

And there goes David and William, completely breaking the seal. It had been so easy to cheer for other's success when their paths didn't cross this much, but now it feels like a zero-sum game. Every win for William is a potential for David's failure. And Pastrnaks are not known for holding back. 

He doesn't know why his breathing has turned so ragged.

"Am I gonna have to despise your guts like this every spring?"

William's voice sounds wretched and David hates it, hates that he can fill in the blanks of what Willy is not saying. If it's a choice between hockey or each other, there is no choice. David's gonna play the way that he needs to. He's experienced too much pain, too many blisters on his feet, too much poverty, too much death on his way to where he is to ever give an inch, even if it's for William Nylander's heart.

"Do we stop?" he asks. 

"I don't know."

William hangs up on him but he sends a host of messages the day after, most of them like this: _i remember almost everything that i said and i'm so so so sorry. please talk to me again._

David is letting his calls go to voicemail now. It takes a few more days for the texts to contain something different. 

_please say you'll come to sweden._

-

A year ago, on the summer of his first big contract, David packed for himself: a burner phone with a Vodafone SIM card, his lucky gloves, and none of the Bruins clothing he had accrued in the two years since they drafted him. After a call to his agent ceding to his good judgment, he had let his real phone run out of battery, then buried it at the bottom of his luggage. The number for his burner phone was only known to three people: his mother, his agent, and William. 

He went home of course, always a dutiful son, but then he found himself crawling up north to a suburb in Stockholm, hunkered over there like a wounded animal. 

The talks with the organization had turned horribly, and it was bleeding out into the media. He felt bruised by it, having his name dragged through the mud so that the club can shave off a couple million dollars from his ask. He had lived and breathed Bruins hockey for two entire years, but it had not mattered to old men who felt nothing as they cut him down. He wondered why he even bothered, thought about playing in the KHL to burn out his free agency restriction before taking a gamble again. 

"That's ridiculous," William told him with a look of disgust. "You know you don't belong there, Pasta."

William had taken him on a train ride to the beaches in Höllviken and they were sitting on a deck that jutted out into the sea, the water around them the same shade of blue as William's eyes. He'd told Willy this with a cheesy, flirtatious voice, and his answering grin had been more relieved than anything. David had not been himself. Willy was coming from a painful post-season in the AHL himself, a playoffs filled with thwarted expectations, but he was spending all his time trying to cheer David up.

He'd felt unworthy of it. 

"Maybe it's over now with the club. Maybe I said too much and they said too much. Can't fix anymore." 

David felt Willy nudge him with an elbow, motioning at the tube of sunscreen at his other side. Handing it over, he watched with hooded eyes as William reapplied it all over his shoulder, up his neck and his slowly pinking face. He was losing the inevitable paleness that tended to descend on all players after a particularly long hockey season. He was golden again.

Willy said, "Nah, of course they'll take you back. They were already lucky to have had you. Every place is lucky to have you."

David turned to his side and brought up a hand to cradle Willy's jaw, bringing him closer and kissing him. They kissed until they were breathless with it, before he let his mouth wander to the corner of Willy's lips, the bridge of his nose, the paperthin skin of both of Willy's eyelids. He got to taste everything--the salt from the sea from their earlier swim, the bitterness of recently applied sunscreen, the sweetness underneath it all.

The people of Boston may have thought he was made up of nothing more than greed and a chafed ego but he knows he's made of more. Substantial parts of him are shaped by Willy's love and his faith, and these were the things that filled out his ribs.

He rested his lips finally against Willy's freckled shoulder. "Thank you. But you just loyal."

"Yeah. But I'm also right."

*

**Author's Note:**

>  **More detailed warnings:**  
>  \- This fic contains scenes where two characters who will end up together are portrayed when they were 16 to 17 years old. Nothing overtly sexual or romantic occurs during those scenes but they do happen later.  
> \- Brief allusions to actual family death (Pasta's dad). It's referred to very obliquely but it's part of the general angst in the story.  
> \- Brief mention of head trauma, and it was used as a hurtful thing to say during a conflict.
> 
> Please let me know if there are more specific things that I should warn about.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> \- So like, I know that the story kind of ends with a cliffhanger, but Pasta did [go to Sweden this summer](https://sean-moneyhands.tumblr.com/post/174919323222/bergymarchy-i-love-pasta#notes) and played some probably platonic tennis matches against Willy, so on a meta level this is does end in a happy ending, right? Yeah.  
> \- The time jumps for this entire fic is way erratic, apologies for that. It basically spans the start of Pasta's career in Sodertalje in 2012 up to the 2018 playoffs, with the last scene doubling back as a flashback to the summer before the 2017 season.  
> \- Shout out to Marc Savard for his YouTube channel, where I got the inspiration and the details of the stick taping scenes. I feel leery about making a link here for search engine reasons, but I highly recommend that you look him up.  
> \- I have a very, very indietrash playlist for this fic and it's [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/cakespeare/playlist/3Xuvn4PfqhbCFayMUSiox0).  
> \- [My Tumblr.](https://sean-moneyhands.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [letter from the trenches (the absent hearts remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363257) by [silkstocking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkstocking/pseuds/silkstocking)




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